Tuesday, December 27, 2005

We left Spokane at about 10 am on the 27th to head back to Seattle and a few hours of work. I was tres triste about the holiday being over and no longer being able to, without any kind of remorse, consume a half a bag of potato chips and pie for dinner, and was in no mood to have a flippant state trooper pull us over for speeding. Ironically, Christian was driving, which meant that the trooper caught him in the five minutes where he wasn't going exactly 72 miles per hour on cruise control.

The trooper knocked on my window, I handed him our paperwork and our conversation went like this:

State trooper: Were you folks looking for a speeding ticket today?Me (very annoyed at the rhetorical question to which I was supposed to reply no, while hanging my head in shame and beating my breast): Does anyone answer yes to that question?ST: Well, you must have been, because you were speeding.

(We were going 81. Christian asked)

Me: It's pretty straight through here. It's hard to not speed.ST: Not according to the law. The law says you drive the speed limit at all times.

Now, all of this was said in a very flip tone as if he was our moral superior and had the obligation to belittle us for committing the unforgivable crime of driving 11 miles per hour over the speed limit, when we had just been outstripped by at least three SUVs going half again as fast at the time he pulled us over. I absolutely despise being talked down to, especially by someone who willingly lives in Moses Lake. As he walked away, I did mutter "dill hole", and he might have heard me. Ahem. I'm almost certain he did, as when he returned from his car, he handed back our paperwork (sans ticket) and asked:

ST: Where are you coming from?Me: SpokaneST (putting his hand to his ear and leaning in): What?Me: SpokaneST: Are you having a bad day? (Said in that tone most people use when repeating a line that someone they hate just said, that singsongy tone that implies mockery.)Me: Yes, Christmas is over, we left my parents' house and now I have to go to work.ST: Is that any reason to treat me badly?Me (surprised and REALLY annoyed, now): I wasn't treating you badly.ST: Yes, you are. You just did. Be thankful you weren't the one driving. You would have gotten a big ticket. You shouldn't treat people badly.Me (indignant): I wasn't!

It was too late, though, as he was walking away in a huff, like I had crushed his tiny little soul and he had to go cry in his car.

It was a damn good thing he walked away when he did. I probably would have gotten arrested for what I was going to say next.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

When I was in college, I had to take 4 years of philosophy. In the upper level classes, I had the honor and pleasure of listening to the incessant posturing and minutiae quibbling of the pompous philosophy majors and Scholastics who were so fixated on the interpretation of the actual that, to prove to themselves that we do, in fact, exist in corporeal form, they were compelled to screw every girl they could William James into bed. I did gain one invaluable bit of wisdom from my involvement with these individuals, however. Apparently, philosophers don't read novels. None of them, according to the odious twit who had the nerve to look down his nose at "Sir Walter's Concubine," or whatever high minded work of fine fiction my roommates and I were reading aloud at the time that pasty little twerp came over for party. I never did find out who invited him.

Because so many philosophers were also "psychiatrists", like the above-mentioned Jung, my classmates would INEVITABLY end up arguing about the archetypes of man and how their fathers never loved them and does the building next door really exist, or do we just perceive it to exist, and blah blah blah until I wanted to pound my head against the desk and scream.

So, when a guy who HAD to have gone to a Jesuit college came on NPR to express his shock and dismay at the remake of King Kong and his disgust over the imagery of the ape who OBVIOUSLY represents the fear of the white man towards the black man and what was with the aborigines and then actually used the phrase "As Jung said....," I felt my forehead involuntarily strike my desk. The consequent blackout was a welcome release.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Why why WHY??? It's been snowing in Spokane for a month. A MONTH!! And now, that we're going there, desperate for actual winter, we get weather we could have gotten at home. This has been a shitty two weeks. I need a miracle.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Just in case I was harboring any doubts that the woman on the elevator with me was not only a right wing Christian but very, very patriotic, she had to wear her "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" button and not one, but TWO World Trade Center memorial pins, one of which was actually cross-stitched on a background of an American flag. 'Cause you know, if you don't advertise your committment to never forget 9/11, that means you're a calloused liberal whore who couldn't care less about terrorism.

Monday, December 12, 2005

I'm going to record the incredible conversation in bird that is being shouted across my house right now. We moved Vampyra into the kitchen on Friday night for "locational therapy" and you'd think we had connected her to electrodes and were shocking her every time she had an aggressive thought. Which, apparently, is all the time. The screeching and chirping and chattering....oh my God. From the time the sun comes up until we finally cover her cage she is furious and scolding us for not letting her be near her looooooove. But there's just too much abuse. Fritz's poor little feet.

Jayden and Kyan were over yesterday and the birds would chirp and Jayden would shrink back and ask if Stanze was going to bite him. I took Fritz out to show Jayden that not all birds are vicious blood suckers and Fritz bit me. He was giving me a manicure and got a little overzealous. My nails look great though. Jayden has been traumatized forever, though. It's ironic that he's more comfortable with snakes than birds. All he wanted was to hold the snake. "Is Frederick awake? Can I hold him? Can he be around my neck?" God, if my mom had been there, I would have had 911 already dialed with paramedics standing by to restart her heart.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Last year, on an idle Saturday, Christian and I wanted to go visit the Serpentarium, the Monroe, Washington home of the Reptile Man and his herp collection. We had a grand time, la la la, until we got to the front and saw that the young woman behind the counter had a small snake around her neck. When I asked her about it, as it was quite beautiful, she told me that it was a baby anaconda, an unexpected addition to the Serpentarium family that one day appeared along with its many siblings in the anaconda tank. Oops. It's usually an excellent idea, when keeping multiple animals in the same cage, to SEX THEM. Anacondas, unlike most other herps, bear live young as they're primarily water-dwelling, and are not nest-sitters, so the keepers, unless they were really observant (har) wouldn't know the female was gravid. Anyway, she told me that all of the other anaconda babies had been purchased, and she was going to keep the one on her neck until it got too big, and then she was going to give it to a zoo. My head began to spin and steam came pouring out of my ears as I did a fair Donald-Duck-turning-into-a-teapot imitation. Before Christian could stop me, I got really snippy with her and told her that zoos don't want outgrown pets and that they have enough animals to take care of without having to take in every idiot's ill-guided attempt to have a cool animal that gets creepy when the pet gets big enough to eat adult rabbits. She was not pleased with me. The recent news reports about pet Burmese pythons released in the Everglades really chapped my ass and I now have a yen to ensure that large python and boa species be illegal for import, breeding and sale. I just don't think that the average consumer is equipped to handle an animal that gets to be over 20 feet long and needs a cage that's 10 x 10.

SO, the long and short is that the Reptile Man was on KUOW today, so I thought I'd call and get his opinion on this issue as his staff doesn't seem to be at all educated about these issues. However, by the time I got on the radio, I had two seconds and people were standing at my desk. Hear me make a doof out of myself here.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

The Seattle Choral Company, recently a part of Pacific Northwest Ballet's "Hail to the Conquering Hero," stages two shows of its own today (8 p.m.) in Town Hall (downtown at Eighth Avenue at Seneca Street), and tomorrow (8 p.m.) in St. Thomas Episcopal Church (8398 N.E. 12th St., in Medina). The program is called "December Starlight: Carols for the Christmas Season," and it focuses on traditional carols plus new additions to the holiday choral repertoire. In that latter category are works premiered by retired choral great Dale Warland, whose Dale Warland Singers were a byword for excellence and innovation. The works include pieces by Frank Ferko, Stephen Paulus, Marjorie Hess and Steve Heitzeg (the enchanting "little tree," to an e.e. cummings poem). Also on tap: recent works of Jon Washburn, Frank Ticheli, Jennifer Higdon and two Northwest composers, Bern Herbolsheimer and Donna Gartman Schultz.Harpist Bethany Chattin and oboist Gabriel Renteria join conductor Fred Coleman and his chorus for these two concerts (tickets: 800-838-3006 or http://www.seattlechoralcompany.org/).

After this weekend, the Seattle Choral Company goes on to guest with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor/trumpeter Doc Severinsen for five holiday pops concerts that should prove wildly popular. Holiday Pops with Doc Severinsen features the former "Tonight" show trumpeter and starts at 7:30 Thursday, continuing through Dec. 11; for details, visit http://www.seattlesymphony.org/ or call 206-215-4747 for tickets.

The singers join the Symphony again on New Year's Eve, where a Gershwin/Bernstein gala will include the Choral Company singers in Bernstein's "West Side Story" Suites, under the baton of Gerard Schwarz. The singers will portray the Sharks and the Jets, as well as leading roles: Monica Harris (as Anita), Lisa Rogers Lee (Francisca), Susan Salas (Rosalia) [ME ME ME!!!], Tessa Studebaker (Consuelo), Charles Logan (Riff) and Craig Garretson (Bernardo). For tickets and New Year's Eve party details, call the above Seattle Symphony number.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Every time we drive to Bellingham to visit Christian's folks, we drive by an alpaca farm in Mount Vernon, and every time I squeal and whine and beg to stop, but we always have a timeline to get to Bellingham and we are inevitably running late due to Christian's incessant pottering and it's too late to stop on the way home as we most likely stayed longer than we planned because Christian had to teach his dad ONE MORE THING in Photoshop.

Well, the day after Thanksgiving, we left Bellingham in the early afternoon to drive home while it was still light out, and since it was only three and I deemed that we had plenty of time to get the fake Christmas tree home and decorate it (because it HAD TO BE DONE that night or Christmas would be ruined), I grovelled wheedled and begged until I got my way, and we stopped at the farm. We hit their lovely little shop with sweaters and blankets knitted out of alpaca wool and I purchased some dreamy yarn with which to make impractical over-the-knee stockings from Handknit Holidays because I don't have enough complex knitting projects started right now, what with the matching sweaters I'm making for my nephews, Christan's Aran sweater and my beaded cardigan that I'M NEVER GOING TO FINISH.

Because when I get really excited I chatter incessantly, I found out from the woman behind the counter that the farm would be opening all of their stores on December 1st and that I should come back and visit and buy more things and see the alpacas in the daytime. Could I pet one? I asked, as I have a weird and passionate yearning to own an alpaca or llama, although more alpaca than llama, but either member of the camel family would do. They make little mumbling noises under their breath and have soft noses. She told me that she had attended a birth of a brand new alpaca baby that morning and she imagined that the owners of the farm would let me pet one if I returned. Pet a baby alpaca. Oh God.

So, on Saturday, we hopped in the car and drove the long hour to Mount Vernon, marvelling at the lingering snow as we got farther north and complaining bitterly that we live in the land of perpetual sogginess. We made it to the farm at about 2:30 and I bought another skein of yarn, partly because I didn't have enough for the stockings with one skein and partly because I wanted to butter the farm owner up to make sure she would let me see the baby alpaca. I made polite conversation as long as I could, and then asked in the voice I reserve only for use when asking special favors if I could PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE pet an alpaca, and the woman whose shrine I shall now build over my TV agreed to take me into the barn to see the new babies. I tried hard to be cool and not run squealing into the yard, flinging myself on the ground in joyous convulsions.

When the kind lady took us into the barn, though, I had to pause. There TWO baby alpacas, one a week old and one a DAY OLD, but they were kept with their mothers in a little enclosed room full of hay. Hay and dander. Oy. Now, I have made many bad decisions in my life pertaining to my health, but pretty much all of them have revolved around staying in places in which animals had shed every hair and bit of dander in the exact spot I was sitting or sleeping, resulting in a grand mal asthma attack requiring weeks of medication and my mother lecturing me about how I needed to be responsible for my own health and blah blah blah. I KNEW that going into that room would have dire consequences, especially as I was just diagnosed with pleurisy, but OH MY GOD, there were TWO BABY ALPACAS!!! How can a potential asthma attack compete with that much cuteness?? SO MUCH CUTENESS HOW DO THEY NOT EXPLODE??

Can you see the eyelashes??? CAN YOU????? I don't think I actually spoke real words for 45 minutes. The little black alpaca really took to us, and wriggled his way between our legs, to the surprise of all, especially the owner's sister in the room with us. He even frolicked. FROLICKED AND SCAMPERED, I TELL YOU! She couldn't believe how affectionate he was with us, and even his mother looked like she only wanted to trample us, rather than rip our heads off with her not-insubstantial teeth.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Weatherpeople are teases. They are the girl in high school who loved to make out and grind with all the boys but would never let them get under her shirt. They are the boy in college who would constantly call you and tell you how beautiful you were but would never kiss you and would run away if you mentioned the "b" word. Yes, I know he was gay, but I was naive. Geez, people, I went to Catholic school.

I want to live in a place that gets snow. Lots and lots of snow. But I live here, in the city that fears snow like LA fears an earthquake, like New York fears Midwesterners on vacation. A potential dusting causes an orgy of dire prophesies from newscasters and portentious warnings from the police force to not drive if at all possible and to tape the windows and have candles ready.

I have yet to see a snowfall here that lasts for more than 12 hours and that actually sticks to the road, but you would never know that from the way the weatherpeople are speaking in terrified, quivering voices and throwing dramatic charts up on the news screens. It's like they can see the end of times approaching on the Doppler radar, sweeping up from Tacoma like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

SAGUENAY, Quebec -- A 15-year-old girl with a peanut allergy died after kissing her boyfriend, who had just eaten a peanut butter snack, hospital officials said Monday.

Christina Desforges died in a Quebec hospital Wednesday after doctors were unable to treat her allergic reaction to the kiss that occurred the previous weekend.

Desforges, who lived in Saguenay, about 155 miles north of Quebec City, almost immediately was given a shot of adrenaline, a standard tool for treating the anaphylactic shock brought on by a peanut allergy, officials said.

An autopsy was being performed.

The symptoms of peanut allergy can include hives, plunging blood pressure and swelling of the face and throat, which can block breathing.

Peanut allergies have been rising in recent decades. The reason remains unclear but one study found that baby creams or lotions with peanut oil may cause children to develop allergies later in life.

End

When Christian and I were first dating, he ate a PB sandwich and then kissed me, not realizing that food allergies didn't just make one daintily sneeze into a delicate lace hanky. Fortunately, I only got fashionably pouty lips.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

despite the fact that only two other people are left in the office on the day before Thanksgiving, both of them will walk by your chair mere seconds after you just couldn't contain that tiny fart any more.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Cousin Stephanie and I went to see Jarhead on Saturday. Another cousin, Aaron, is in the movie, but apparently not recognizable as we couldn't find him despite our combined effort.

It was a good if slightly frustrating movie (too many unanswered questions), but one scene in particular (a shower scene, of course) did provide the answer to at least one oft-asked question, albeit not one I think the film intended to ask: the question of why there is so little male full-frontal nudity in mainstream Hollywood films.

I have no need to see that many dangling testicles in such vivid and, well, enormous detail. Ever. Again. Please.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Christian and I went to a movie last night with my sister, Tina, and we were chatting about her recent long trip to South Carolina, where she visited a friend she hasn't seen in a while, and Florida, where she apparently went to a psychic. I mean, the point of the trip was not to see the psychic, she was just incendental. But a psychic? Tina???

Anyway, Fred, Tina's boyfriend, has a second home near his family in Florida, and when his sister and mother were visiting, they went to this psychic who, according to Fred's mom and sis, gave them some shockingly accurate information and predictions. Tina, being adventerous, said that she'd like to go, too, and was told to bring photos of those about whom she had questions. She brought a picture of her friend Deb who recently passed away from ovarian cancer, and, as many things have come out in the past few years about my grandfather on my Dad's side of the family, she brought a picture of both my grandfather and my long suffering grandmother, who, according to her children, was an amazing parent and obviously quite a saint for staying with my asshole grandfather and not poisoning his soup.

When the psychic was "reading the pictures" and telling Tina about other people whose pictures she brought, the psychic spoke in the terms of "so and so wants me to tell you," or "so and so says." But, when Tina asked about our grandfather, the psychic only commented on his personal tendencies, like stubbornness and thrift, and didn't have any interesting "messages" from him to relay. This left Tina wondering, and I quote, "does this mean he's roasting in hell and unavailable for comment?"

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Despite the fact that, as a teen, I never went to any formal dance other than the one I attended with my father (it's not like it sounds), I still fostered a longing for frothy dresses like the ones the bitchy girl tried on in Pretty in Pink. I wanted tulle and ribbons and yards and yards of lace. I remember when a Gunne Sax dress was the height of Spokane couture and the girls with the shimmery white dresses with matching white satin pumps were the envy of all the poor girls whose moms only shopped the sales.

Since those halcyon days, however, I have developed scorn for most formal wear manufacturers. Most gowns are cheaply made with easily torn seams, frail zippers and insufficient lining. Shopping last night for a gown for New Year's Eve was an interesting lesson in "what the hell were these people thinking?" It seems that every dress this year is in the style of the dreaded mermaid tail. Cut on the worst line possible, the dresses accentuated my hips and had too little fabric to suitably cover my bust. And really, on stage, there is nothing more hideous than a dress that looks like a tube that flares out at the knee. Pretty.

Imagine my shock when I saw a glimmer of a dress hidden behind the rack of tried-on clothes that had a fitted bodice with a full skirt and a matching bolero, in the highly coveted brown satin. And I was even more shocked when it was Jessica McClintock, that bastion of 80's prom wear. Huh, I though. Can this be? Can the stronghold of all that is the 80s have a pretty and well-made dress? Of course, they didn't have it even remotely in my size, but when I looked it up online, they had it in the closest approximation of my massive bosom's measurements, but, alas, with no bolero. However, I found a fabulous fabric last night with which to make a jacket, so all I need to do is send a pattern and the fabric to my mom.

As if coming back from an excellent Disneyland vacation with some kind of illness wasn't bad enough, I found out on Friday that offers went out for a production for which I auditioned in June and not only did I not get the lead, I didn't even get the secondary role which I would have sung the shit out of. I had a good audition, am ideally suited for this rep and know the GD personally. It's totally ridiculous. For Pete's sake, I've been singing this rep for ten years and I kick ass at it. The GD actually applauded and said "bravo" after I sang. Like I posted in an earlier tirade, I just don't run with the right crowd and don't suck up enough. Either that, or I'm too fat.

The only thing I'm trying to remember is that, every time I haven't gotten something I really wanted, something better came along. I'm hoping this is the case this time, as I'm pretty depressed.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

On Monday afternoon, I left work early due to a skull-cracking headache, and came home to this:

The Oxacan pottery from Mexico finally came (YAY!!!), packaged in its own little custom crate. I pried the cross-bars off with a hammer (with many splinters resultant) and opened the box:

to find much packing material, including shredded newspapers, all in Spanish, bubble wrap for later enjoyment:

and the first two (thankfully intact) items on top were the teapot and creamer:

For a minute, I was ramping up to be seriously pissed as I thought we had been sent the wrong items, as I remembered that we bought the blue pot and accessories, but Christian reminded me later that WE wanted the yellow as it reminded HIM of the sun and his Mexican ancestry. He really just wanted his way.

All complete, the set looked spectacular, and slightly Italian, which makes sense, due to the Mediterranean influence from the Spaniards:

I shall now be able to drink tea and remember the terrifyingly aggressive ware hawkers who were like gorillas in that, if you made eye contact with them, they charged. So very much worth the wait.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

My bird has bested me, and now she has injured her one and only love (she bruised Fritz's foot, his tiny and precious little footsie) and drew blood from MY NEPHEW, so to the bird behaviorist we go. Yes, I know. Bird behaviorist? Why don't I call a pet psychic while I'm at it? I was already the crazy lady on the block strewn about with snakes and frogs and turtles, but now I'm teetering precariously close to being profiled on Animal Planet's Barking Mad. I used to truly scoff at people who spent hundreds if not thousands of their slave wages on their pets, but now I truly understand. I have been deeply hurt by my bird's rejection of me and my offering of love, and I want to know WHY. Why will she seem to love me one minute and attempt to rip my arm off the next??? Why does she injure Fritz when she obviously adores him? I don't want to come home one day to the sight of carnage, so I shall nip (har) this behavior in the bud.

Monday, October 31, 2005

When we went on our Disney Cruise in May, we stopped in Mazatlan, where we were morally compelled to purchase a spectacularly gorgeous Oxacan teapot, creamer and sugar bowl at a chi-chi boutique in the fancy tourist district by all the mega-resorts where you never actually have to see a local. Now, the price started at $100 over they-must-be-smoking-crack-as-there's-no-way-I'd-pay-that-much-for-pottery, but I think we ended up spending around $350, which was probably still about 10 times too much, but the items were supposedly painted by a one-eyed paraplegic with severely impaired fashion sense, so we thought it was worthwhile to put food on his table to feed his inevitable 27 children we would have been told about had we refused to purchase the items.

As the items were very heavy and we had to fly home from LA and the idea of schlepping a box full of breakables through the airport filled me with horror, we let them ship the box for $70. They asked for our email and told us that we'd get a DHL confirmation number within a week.

A week turned into a month, turned into two and then three. Christian called and called, but he only ever got a fax tone or someone who couldn't help but PROMISED to have the shipping manager call him back.

Well, lo and behold, Christian checked his junk email and found a message from LAST WEEK stating that our package was shipped and that the store would follow up to ensure that our items were intact. I checked the tracking code and the package should be here today, only five months late.

If anything is broken, I'm flying down to Casa Maya and beating them all round the head and shoulders with pottery shards.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

I've been very good this year. Well, except for my absences from church because of my disagreement with the American Catholic Church's stance on the ordination of gay priests.... Other than that, though, I've been very good.

I've numbered my list to make it easier to keep track.

I'd like:

1. A video iPod with every episode of Alias loaded on it.2. Addi Turbo needles in the 47 inch length in sizes I don't yet have (0 and 1, 9-the end).3. The latest seasons of Gilmore Girls and Alias (see above).4. These shoes, size 8 1/2. You might have to sell Blitzen to get them, though.

OK, so I know this is really mean and that the people who have this bumper sticker do so because they want to share the message of love, peace, cooperation and hippie tripe, but I must air my grievance against the appalling structure of the phrase:

"Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty."

Hmph. There is no symmetry in the composition. The implied command is to:

1. Practice random kindness.2. Practice senseless acts of beauty.

1. I understand this part. You can practice kindness, as kindness is a noun, like football or music, both practiceable things. The adjective describing the noun "kindness" is "random," which defines the type of kindness you are exhorted to practice. Fine. All well and good.

2. Here's where I get annoyed. After the conjunction "and," one would and should expect to find another noun that can be practiced and an adjective describing that noun. I mean, I need to be told what to do here! Give me a clear directive! And we do, but what we get is "(Practice) senseless acts of beauty", which consists of an adjective, a noun and a prepositional phrase. There are two nouns in this half of the sentence, but one of these nouns, "beauty," has been unwillingly conscripted into adjective status, as "beauty" here is used to describe the type of act. It's not a senseless act of whimsy or obfuscation, but "beauty." Here, "acts of beauty" could be interchanged with "beautiful acts," without a change in meaning.

Now, if the lack of consistent adjective usage wasn't enough to make me writhe in agony, I shall deconstruct further and reach the root of my hatred. As we are asked in the beginning of all of this to practice things, we should be able to tell WHAT things by looking at the nouns associated with the verb "practice." To do this, we should be able to take out the adjectives and prepositional phrase and determine our newfound mission. If we do this, we are asked to:

Practice kindness and acts.

Ha! Not much of an order, is it, bumper sticker manufacturers and the sheep who buy their crap!

NOW, if we were asked to "Practice Acts of Random Kindness and Senseless Beauty," we would, in fact, be asked to do one thing, namely, perform ACTS. The type of acts then would be merely adjectives; acts of "Kindness" and "Beauty," which can both be performed conjointly.

Another, lengthier option would be to change the phrase to "Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty." This has a nice symmetry to it and is perfectly correct, but it's a bit bulky. I don't like the repetition of a word in a wordy sentence of words in all its wordiness. It's just too much.

Ha! I win! I shall print up new bumper stickers and go on a spree of scraping and plastering, making sure to achieve maximum penetration of the hippie cars, especially in Fremont! Or not. I need some tea.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

I just got a call from the Director of the Seattle Choral Co., for whom I was one of the two mezzo soloists last season. His group is performing West Side Story with the Seattle Symphony on New Year's Eve, and he asked me to sing the part of one of Maria's three friends, so I'll FINALLY GET TO SOLO WITH THE SEATTLE SYMPHONY! Sheesh, every other mezzo I know has done it, so it's my turn!

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

I hate my boobs, hate them with the white hot intensity of a thousand burning suns. They're huge and ungainly and have caused me no end of grief, discomfort and misery. From the moment in the sixth grade when I embarrassingly realized I had them after seeing a picture taken of only my midsection when I stood up too soon in a photo booth, I wished that I could stay 10 forever. I hated the knowing, "she's growing up so fast" look adults gave me when they saw the bra lines through the back of my lavender polo shirt, I hated the snickers of the boys and the angry and resentful comments of the girls whose friendship I so desperately craved who hadn't yet had to go to JC Penney's and be humiliated by the kindly older woman in the lingerie section when she came into the dressing room and checked the fit of the industrial, 1980's, white cotton bralette. I hated the fact that when I got to high school, boys would stare overtly at my chest and comment on the size of my bra in front of their girlfriends. I was awkward and anxious and despised being the center of that kind of attention. I ached to be slim and boyish and be able to wear tank tops in the summer and pretty, frilly strapless dresses, and not have to hide in oversized sweaters stolen from my dad, who would then get irritated when his sweaters came back stretched out.

I have never understood why any woman would pay any sum of money to increase their bust size and why so many of them have told me how lucky I am to have such an ample bosom. Why could they just not be happy to have clothing fit them, to be able to button sweaters and shirts without gaping and pulling and wear the same size on top and on bottom? I've kept the dress I wore to my rehearsal dinner in my closet as I love the crazy pattern and the memories, but despite the fact that it still fits through the hips and butt, my boobs have gotten two cup sizes bigger in four years. I'm wearing the dress at work today, unbuttoned on top, with a slip underneath and a sweater over, but the sweater keeps slipping off my chest due to the slinky fabric, so I've been walking around all day surreptitiously holding things in front of my chest and pinching the fabric closed with my fingers, like a nervous habit.

After my hysterectomy, my ovaries kept churning out hormones, but my uterus wasn't there any more to tell them when to stop. So, for a year, my boobs would get bigger every month and never shrink back after the estrogen flood stopped. I went from being a 36DDD to a 36G or H. Most people scoff disbelievingly when I tell them that I'm a 36, as I'm such a big girl, but I have teeny, tiny bones-little itty bitty fingers are my proof. My wedding ring is a size 5 1/2. Besides, it isn't the rib cage size that indicates breast size, it's the cup size. I remember watching a terrible daytime talk show where young women dressed too provocatively and their families were ashamed. One such woman's sister was saying that, because her trampy little sis had a size 38 D chest, she felt as though she had the obligation to expose it. I blinked disbelievingly at the screen. 38 D?? Whoopee. The D is the only thing that matters in boob sizing, not the 38, and D is absolutely nothing.

Even now, as an adult, I have grown men in my workplace who have never looked me in the eye. During a production where I wore a corset and had extraordinary cleavage, my torso was under great discussion in the men's dressing room. Even the other girls in mine had to ask what size I was, as my God, they're just so huge.

Every large chested girl will sing the lament of the baggy waist and tight chest in everything she tries on. If it fits in the bust, it will be massive in the waist. All of my shirts need to be tailored, but I don't have the skill or the money, and if I do end up having clothes that fit both my bust and waist, my bust looks even more enormous by comparison.

I think I will inevitably have to get a reduction, but I don't want to get a divorce, which would probably be a preoperative procedure for me. Breasts hold a weird fascination for straight men for two sacs of fat and glands.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

I have snakes and I'm obsessed with early music, science fiction and Disney. I'm one step away from living in my parents' basement, partying on the sly with my SCA friends in their parents' basements, smoking pot and giving boys I like obscure and mythologically significant names.

Despite feeding the nerd fire with my extremely dorky posts, I must talk about my pets AGAIN. Just when I think I have them all figured out, they spin me around and make me pin the tail on the donkey. Frederick magically (or should it be magickally?) started eating again last week, Gwendolyn is constantly out of her shell, Stanze walked RIGHT INTO my hand last night...it's madness, I tell you. MADNESS.

Last night, using the dowels Christian bought to make the birds perches for when they're out of the cage (they need foraging areas you know, as we couldn't POSSIBLY let them think they weren't in the wild jungles of Ecuador), I managed to get Stanze out of her cage without grievous bodily injury. I figured out that, if you use one dowel to distract her beak and the other one to press against her abdomen, she's too busy concentrating on annihilating the first to fly away from the second. Some birdie instict kicks in and, while teaching that first dowel who's boss (she is, in all things), she'll unconsciously step onto the second. Now, this only works for as long as it takes to actually lift her from the cage, as she quickly figures out that she can run up the dowel on which she's sitting and bite bite bite those hateful fingers, so I have to have the first dowel ready to intercept her as she guns for my offending hand. She's speedy.

Bloated with my success at getting her out of her cage, I removed her from the living room (and her cage area) into the bedroom to lessen her sense of protectiveness for her daily stepping up practice. I was still a little leery of offering my hand as a sacrificial meal, so I passed her from dowel to dowel for about fifteen minutes until she stopped running at my digits and could sit still and take the proffered dowel with her feet rather than her beak. However, after about another five minutes, she got a really cheesed off look on her face as though to say that she got the point and look how good of a bird she was being, not having bitten me in ten whole minues, so could she please fly about a bit. Please?? She flapped pathetically to my bedside table without waiting for permission and hid beside a glass and back scratcher as though she thought the horrible probing stick couldn't see her through the magnifying properties of the water. I didn't want her to get the crazy idea that she was in charge, so I set my hand about six inches in front of her and said "come here" in my most stern and "I'm actually terrified of you but am pretending that I'm not" voice. She ran across the top of the table right into my palm and looked up at me with those little black, blinking eyes. Crack. My heart split in two and lay throbbing on the floor. I picked her up and she kept cocking her head and looking at me with the same bewildered expression which I'm sure I was giving her. She let me kiss her and kiss her and kiss her and I gave her a good scratch in return. It was the happiest I've been in months.

Of course, when she got within five feet of her cage, she whipped herself into a frenzy of hormones and fluff and chattered angrily at me when I put the cover over the cage, but I knew we had made progress.

We gave in. We're weak and frail and pathetic and couldn't take the whining and the screaming any more. I need love, not hate when I come home at the end of a long, thankless day, and the only way I could forsee getting that love was to give the birds exactly what they wanted: each other. So, on Saturday, the crankiest bird in the West and the sweetest bird in the Universe met, and there was much rejoicing. And preening. And letting of blood (human blood, not bird blood. I'd never allow any pet blood to be spilled, only my own).

First, they saw each other across the seed-strewn carpet:

Then, they rushed into each other's beaky embrace:

Then, they realized that we, their humans, had done a terrible job keeping their feathers tidy, so they preened:

And preened:

And preened into total submission:

And all was well and right in the world (well, until I got too near Fritz and Stanze charged me and bit my leg, but I don't have a picture of that).

Friday, October 14, 2005

I'm not quite sure where to begin mocking this. I mean, I know that shedding an undesirable side effect of pet ownership, and I suppose that this COULD remedy the problem, but I can't imagine what I'd have to wear under an article knitted per this book's instructions to keep it from instantly knocking me dead the second I put it on. Oh, and imagine how long it would take to get enough fiber to make the yarn, especially if you had a small dog. By the time you got enough, your pet would be dead. Well, maybe that's the point...a memento of your beloved Rover.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Anyway, I'm completely in love with the bunnies from Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Why do they have such piggy little noses? I don't know, but they make me giggle every time I look at the picture on my desktop.

Ever since I was a kid, I've tried very hard to not let myself get too excited about trips as I'm convinced that something terrible is going to happen and I won't be able to go and the devastation would be more than I could handle, so I repress....repress....repress....until about three or so weeks before I go, and then the stomach-clenching begins. This doesn't mean I don't plan. Oh no. I plan. I plan for any ten people. I read enough books and online boards for everyone that goes where I'm going within a year to have their entire day mapped out from breakfast buffet to mid-afternoon coffee break to late night snack. Hmmmm...that's only food. Well, priorities. Anyway, I refuse to be caught off guard. I want to know EVERYTHING about the current situation at my destination. This is all the more important when we're going to Disneyland, as we are on November 5th. I mean, if Splash Mountain is closed when I get to the park and I haven't prepared myself beforehand by reading every website that lists ride closures every day for months leading up to the trip so that if there are any changes I'll know the second they are confirmed, the disappointment at the first sight of the ride closure notice could be fatal, and that would really be a downer for the rest of the group.

The May Disney cruise planning was absolutely the worst. I was so terrified that I would miss something that EVERYONE ELSE KNEW ABOUT that I was physically and psychologically unable to detach myself from the Diz Boards Disney Cruise forum. I mean, what if there was a late night dessert buffet that I missed and it had the best tiramisu in the HISTORY OF DESSERTS, and everyone was talking about it the next morning but us??? God, the trauma.

All of this planning, however, did not take the worrying away. Oh no. Every night I dreamt that we missed our flight, that the boat took off early, that they lost our reservation, that I was, in fact, married to a terrorist and they wouldn't let him on the boat...blah blah blah. I only unclenched the sphincter when we were actually on board and in our room. Then I started to cry and couldn't enjoy myself for four days because I couldn't ACTUALLY BELIEVE that I was on the ship and that it wasn't a dream where I was going to wake up and have to go to work at Telect at 6 am and assemble sprockets like I did when I had just graduated college. Thank God that vacation was two weeks otherwise I wouldn't have had time to enjoy it before it was over.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that every post from now until we go will, most likely, be Disney related. Tee hee and I want a Dole Whip!

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Seattle Opera finally updated their website and it now lists me as a Regular Chorister.

Also, why is it that when I wear mascara it ends up smudged under my eyes and doesn't cling to my lashes, which is its whole reason for being?? Even waterproof mascara dribbles off and makes me look like a heroin addict. Well, a really well-fed heroin addict. Not that I've ever seen a heroin addict up close. Hem. Anyway, I wonder if it's because I put lotion on my face in the morning, per my dermatologist's instruction, and maybe that makes my lashes greasy so the mascara can't adhere properly. Whatever it is, I'm irritated. I like things that do their job well. Especially when I paid $32 for the job to be done. The other mascara-related drama I'm dealing with today, as I'm actually wearing it as opposed to merely letting it languish in my purse, is that, when I wear mascara with glasses, my lashes squoosh against the lenses. I never thought I had very long lashes, but apparently I do. Either that, or my eye sockets are really shallow. Hmmmm.

Monday, October 10, 2005

After opening at #1 with Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit this weekend, poor Aardman woke up to this terrible tragedy:

Blaze Destroys Wallace and Gromit's HistoryBy REUTERSPublished: October 10, 2005LONDON (Reuters) - All the props and sets from the Wallace and Gromit movies were feared destroyed in a fire on Monday, the day after the plasticine pals' debut feature film went straight to the top of the North American box office.Production house Aardman Animations said a blaze at a warehouse in Bristol, western England, was thought to have wiped out its entire history, including models, memorabilia and awards from the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit short films.

"We woke up to the most fantastic news this morning that 'Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit' had debuted in the United States at number one,'' said company spokesman Arthur Sheriff. But this has really thrown us,'' he added. "It's our entire history.''

Sixty firefighters battled flames 100 feet high that engulfed the warehouse at around 5.30 a.m. on Monday, causing the roof to collapse, a fire service spokeswoman said.

"It looks like most of the contents of the building have been destroyed,'' she said, adding the cause of the blaze was under investigation.

Wallace and Gromit are the creations of animator Nick Park, who was also the brains behind the 2000 animated feature film ''Chicken Run.'' He was said to be philosophical about the fire, saying it was put into context by the massive earthquake in Pakistan.

"Nick has been on the phone and while this is devastating, in light of the other news he has been hearing on the radio, it is immaterial,'' Sheriff said.

Park's latest chart-topping film revolves around intrepid inventor Wallace and his faithful canine sidekick Gromit. The adventure sees the pair using a complex vacuum system to protect vegetables from a rabbit problem in their village. The film took $16 million in its first three days of release in North America, more than movies featuring the likes of Cameron Diaz and Jodie Foster.

Aardman Productions, established in 1976, was also behind ''Morph'', another plasticine figure whose adventures on BBC TV won an army of young fans, and helped make the celebrated video "Sledgehammer'' for singer Peter Gabriel.

Sheriff said although all archive material could be lost, the fire should not affect the company's future productions.

Friday, October 07, 2005

When you call a residency program to which you have applied and tell them that you, BY AN INEXPLICABLE COINCIDENCE, are going to be in town visiting your parents at the exact time they will be holding one of their five days of interviews and could they possibly interview you even though they haven't extended you an invitation because, out of the 275 other applicants, your grades and scores are mediocre at best, and they, out of the goodness of their hearts, say yes against their better judgment and you write back and say gee, that date is so inconvenient and doesn't work for me, can I interview the week before, despite the fact that the week before is completely full of candidates who were actually invited and had applications that didn't make it into the "Ha!" pile, and by giving you a spot to begin with someone more deserving won't get an interview, I'd say the answer would be NO.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

As Christian mentioned in his blog, he just skinned (blechy term) the game Bejeweled with a Halloween theme. Of course, he could only use jack o' lanterns, caramel apples, bats, candy corn and spiders as most Halloween imagery has cultish or satanic connotations, and heaven only knows that if we see a black cat in an online video game we'll immediately want to worship Lucifer and sacrifice puppies over an open fire we've built with the wood from the crucifixes we've stolen from every church in the neighborhood, according to a certain Evil Empire office that rhymes with Neo-Folitical.

Monday, October 03, 2005

2. If you cannot achieve #1, at least wear clean clothes, not the funky-ass sweater and pants that have been on your floor for the past six weeks because you're too lazy to do your laundry. Your mom did not come with you to college. Learn to use the washer. That's what it's there for.

3. Wear deodorant. I don't care what you've read about aluminum causing Alzheimer's. If you get on the bus one more time and raise your arm to hold on to the bar and I have to smell your vile armpit, you'll be dead before you could get the disease anyway.

4. Take off your backpack/purse/messenger bag. It takes up the space another person could comfortably occupy, and when you turn around suddenly, I don't want to be knocked into the doors down those really painful stairs. And you're not a messenger. You don't have the balls or the scars.

5. If the bus is full, move back. I don't care that the chick you're chatting up is sitting RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. I will push you, and you'll look really stupid when you fall over and land with your head in the lap of the SCA guy who hasn't changed clothes in weeks (for him, see numbers 1 and 2.

6. If you're sitting on the aisle and the person next to you has to get off, STAND UP AND MOVE OUT OF THE WAY. Don't just turn to the side. I will stick my ass in your face and you won't like it unless you're a dog or you swing that way. In that case, maybe that's why you don't get up. Freak.

7. Don't talk to me. Ever.

8. If I'm sitting next to the window and the seat next to me is free, only take it if EVERY OTHER seat on the bus is taken, even if the only other one left is next to the SCA guy from #5.

9. If you do have to sit next to me, I have a big ass, but it only takes up one seat; I've checked. Don't sit so close that I can feel your leg through the fabric of my pants. I don't let my husband do that.

10. If you are on your phone, don't speak so loudly that the other bus riders are unwilling participants in your conversation. I don't give a shit that he so totally looked at you in class and that he's just sooooo fine. I also don't care about your smug, self-righteous crusade or your argument with your girlfriend. She should dump your ass for letting everyone hear how you're sorry for forgetting to call her the night before because you were out getting drunk with your reprobate friends.

11. If you are the first person in line to get on the bus, do it fast, have your money/pass out and don't ask questions. I will have no problem stepping over your trampled body if you make me wait.

12. If an old person gets on the bus and you're in one of the front seats and the only other available one is in the back, get up. I will pull you out of the seat if I have to. I don't give a shit if you're tired from your night of 20-something debauchery. Grow up and pull up your pants.

13. Say thank you to the bus driver. His/her job sucks.

For the Driver:

1. Don't pull up so far beyond the bus stop that we have to run to get it. I know you do it because you hate your job and you like to see us pant and get all sweaty in our work clothes, but take out your aggression on other drivers, not on your passengers.

2. Leave the heat off at all times. 100 people + a heater (even in the dead of winter) = nasty

3. Don't check out the college girls. You're 50 and it's disgusting. Take off the Tom Cruise in Topgun shades. You look like you should be driving a Camaro, which, come to think of it, you probably do. Pick up women your own age.

4. Don't call out the names of buildings on campus in a singsong voice. We know where we are, and you reminding us just makes us that much pissier about having to go to work.

5. Don't sail by stops because there might be another bus behind you or because you're running late. It's your fault that you're late, so don't make us late, too.

6. Don't, under any circumstances, start driving when an old person has gotten on and they haven't taken a seat yet. Do you want to have a broken hip on your conscience?

7. Don't tap the breaks. It makes us (well, me) carsick. You do that again, and I'll throw up all over you.

Send me any suggestions of rules I might have missed. I'd be happy to include them.

Friday, September 30, 2005

Christian worked with a man who told him about this product, used to edit out objectionable material from mainstream Hollywood movies (well, objectionable to Mormons, and that's pretty much everything).

This from their website:

We edit out:

ProfanityThis includes the B-words, H-word when not referring to the place, D-word, S-word, F-word, etc. It also includes references to deity (G-word and JC-words etc.), only when these words are used in a non-religious context. (They can't even use the words themselves they're JUST SO TERRIBLE.)

Graphic ViolenceThis does not mean all violence, only the graphic depictions of decapitation, impalements, dismemberment, excessive blood, gore etc. (What is the line they use to differentiate graphic violence from non-graphic violence, and why is one OK and not the other? Is it the litres of fake blood? Type of weaponry? Motivation of the character? And what could the etc refer to? How many more forms of graphic violence are there? Oh, AND are there movies Mormon families want to watch that feature IMPALEMENTS?? If so, I don't think editing is going to help.)

NudityThis refers to male and female front and back nudity. (Yeah, well, someone getting their head blown off in a non-graphic violent way is so much better than seeing a boob.)

Sexual ContentThis includes language which refers to sexual activity or has sexual connotation. It also includes visual content of a graphic or stimulating nature. (Who determines what is stimulating? If it's a Mormon, then wouldn't everything be stimulating as they're allowed to do nothing in bed except conceive children through the hole in their underwear?)

People, just rent only G rated movies. You just couldn't have Gladiator without the warrior woman getting cut in half.

Apparently, lasers are the key component missing in the young singer's ongoing struggle to achieve success in the frustrating and arbitrary world that is opera. At least, this is the case according to the man whose vision, last night, brought together all of the chichi, Mr. and Mrs. Richey McMoneybags who love to be associated with the arts without having to be in any way involved with the artists, to donate heavily and applaud in the middle of unfinished arias. When introducing the young singers competing in his event (for admission to which he required the submission of a CD and a full-length body shot), he, with the invaluable aid of my other favorite bow-hunting, name-dropping, microphone-hogging, faux opera benefactor, told the audience that some of us have worked for FOUR WHOLE YEARS on our singing and we do so without costumes, props or lasers. Lasers? Who the fuck are we, Pink Floyd? Is this the Grand Coulee Dam? And FOUR YEARS??? Try 14, motherfucker.

My lovely friend Christy competed and sang the shit out her aria and won second place and $500. However, the girl who won, and who I thought was pretty mediocre, had spectacular cleavage. Christy and I have discussed the role of cleavage in an audition or competition many times. Those who tart up win. Always. The reason for this, we believe, is that judges are often men, and gay men love cleavage as much as straight men. And, because most middle age women are envious of twentysomething womens' pert and perky boobs, they are swayed by plunging decolletage as much as the next, well, guy. The judges last night were all men. Not that Christy's cleavage should be sneezed at. It's quite impressive. It's just that her neckline didn't graze her navel.

It is inevitable that the singer I like the least will win. This happens at every single competition I've watched, with one exception. The blandest, most boring hunk of wood with the most inoffensive voice seems to win over those with actual presence and obvious skill in all areas of the art. I think that the spark of life and (dare I use this cheesy-ass word) passion that you see in singers who have a career of merit frighten people when they witness it close up. It takes the viewer out of their comfortable happy place and into the singer's world, where you can fall in love at first sight, fling a baby into a fire or kill your groom on your wedding night in a fit of insanity. Auditions and competitions in small houses or rooms are dangerous. What sounds huge in a church could sound tiny in a medium to large opera house, and someone who seems too intense in a small space will read to the balcony in a large house. If I hear that my voice is too big for a role one more time, I'm going to start bringing a machete to auditions. My voice doesn't sound too big in a theater, just in this 50 person conference room you rented because you don't have your own venue, you hack. I hope that those who truly possess the brilliance and artistic integrity to bring their fire to each event at which they sing don't become discouraged because the safest person won or got the role. You can't be safe in this career.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

We're just so hip we can't be bothered to come up with new clothing as that would interfere in our leisure time in which to disdain everyone who isn't, so we'll just take the jeans one of us wore in junior high and size them down, add a tank top so thin you could use it to strain cheese, shackle the models to signify how we are all bound by the clothing conventions of the past (and we really like women to be chained up) and get a gorgeous actress to model them in our show. But wait, the actress is too big, so the pants are going to be too small and make her look like she bought them from the Jaclyn Smith collection at KMart. Oh well, cram her in there anyway. She's just a figurehead to prove that people actually buy our clothes and we're not just posers who spend all of our time smoking and drinking and hanging out in bars with no name out front. Who cares if you can see her bra. We can't be bothered to give her more fabric in the shirt. She should have thought of that before she grew breasts. Then, to show that we don't subscribe to eating anything other than tiny, precious little portions in overpriced, overhyped establishments of carefully manufactured cool as that would also interfere with our obvious indifference to anything other than our own needs, let's follow the actress with the usual Ethiopian famine victims to show what our clothes are really supposed to look like when worn, even though they'll never actually be worn as they're meant to be a statement and cost more than the gross domestic product of Peru. All that aside though, we really can't use ballerinas again. They have too much muscle.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Little did I know, when I was in sixth grade and wanted to be able to make my hair look just like one of the original Charlie's Angels, that I would just have to wait twenty years for the day when I wouldn't heed my hairstylist's advice and use a brush to straighten my hair before using the flat iron. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have Farrah hair. Fully feathered. All shall weep at its glory.

Monday, September 26, 2005

I got my hair cut yesterday, and a very modern cut it is, too. That is, I thought it was modern until Christian came home and told me that I looked like Pat Benetar or Liza Minelli in Arthur. Not the lavish compliment I was looking for. However, I think I definitely look more like Joan Jett. I can live with that.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

My suspicions have been confirmed. Constanze is just a teeny tiny prima donna (what better pet for a high maintenance opera singer). I gave Fritz some cooked pasta, exactly the same kind at which Stanze turned up her nose (beak), and HE ATE IT. Ooooo...Stanze's in trouble....

Why oh why do we ever go to the pet store? I know we're weak, so very weak. But, we needed to get a carrier for Constanze for emergencies or for going to the vet, so we started at Pet Professionals, the phenomenal bird store in Redmond, where all of the birds are out of their cages and people bring their pets to interact and anyone can play with the birdies as long as they like. I love this place, and it doesn't make me sneeze, which is shocking. They have three titanic and extremely chatty Macaws, a whole flock of African Greys, Moluccan Cockatoos, every type of conure, cockatiels a ramalamadingdong, and just every other kind of finch, canary, parrot and everything you could imagine. All of the birds can be handled and poor Christian now realizes that he wants a big bird. Sorry, honey, our house is done full up. The Moluccan we held was so flipping spectacular and with the most schmoopy personality that I just wanted to grab him, bury my face in his feathers and call him my poopsie doo. They, however, didn't have a carrier, so we went to Denny's Pet World, the pet store of doom. Why doom? They sell Parrotlets. Again, weak. We thought that getting a cagemate for our girl so she doesn't get too bored when we're at work would help with her temperment, as being bored makes birds pluck. We were told by the owner of PP that the only cage mate for a female Pacific Parrotlet is a male Pacific Parrotlet. Sigh. They had a gorgeous male the bird girl described as her nemesis, so we thought PERFECT! We didn't want a bird Constanze could bully, the little beast. We bought him, and Christian got to name him. It was his turn. His name is Fritz, after both the German parrot in the Tiki Room and the name Christian and Sal used to give all of the WWII German fighter pilots in their models. As the Stanzster has a cold, we needed to keep them apart for three weeks, so we set up the horrible little cage Stanze came in and placed them about three feet apart. Good holy God. The noise is deafening. As soon as Fritz saw Constanze, he started speaking in a piercing, shrieking voice and she responded: chirp, CHIRP, chirp, CHIRP, chirp CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP. I had no idea our bird could be this loud. She whipped herself into a frenzy. She started climbing the walls of the cage and aggressively biting the bars trying to get out, so I opened the cage and she flap, flap, flapped her way over to him and tried to preen him through the bars of his cage. Ah, love at first sight. Or puberty. Or lust. Or whatever.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

I am sickeningly addicted to cracking my back and neck. My desk chair at work is optimally poised to enable maximum back crackage. All I have to do is push against the arm rests with the heels of my hands while I arch my back against the custom-fitted foam contours of the chair back and POW POW! Two years ago, I had surgery and was out of the office for a month and desperately wanted Christian to break into work and steal the chair so I could get a good crack.

When I can hear and feel my neck getting crunchy, I know that a little massage will loosen up the joints enough to get a good, meaty pop if I roll my head JUST RIGHT. Christian's neck cracks are the subject of much jealousy in our marriage. He can get four and five at a time from EACH SIDE when I can only get one wimpy, surfacey one.

Before he hurt his wrist (bastard), Christian had the back-crackin-knack and could push down just right on either side of my spine to get a cascading thwwwwp of released pockets of gas that would render me insensible from joy for at least five minutes (in which I would usually see how much our rug needed vacuuming). Some of my fondest memories are of the cluster cracks Christian wrung from me, especially after I had just worked out and was all limber. We always said we should either video- or audio-tape them for sentimental reasons.

"Ah, do you remember the five cracker of '03 after you did The Firm?" "Ah, yes, that one was for all posterity. Let's watch it again!"

We've even been known to call each other at work with tales of excellent cracks the other had sadly missed hearing. I just got TWO really good back cracks and needed to document them for my later years when osteoporosis and arthritis will inevitably make such cracking impossible.

My goddamn Dansko Mary Janes. I bought them in January as I needed comfortable black shoes that had some oomph. The buttons have broken twice and the elastic has broken three times. I've had them repaired four times as I reaaaaally like them, but I've had it. The elastic broke again this morning. I called Nordstrom to ask if I can exchange them as they have new MJs in stock, and they said yes, so I'm giving up the ghost. I shouldn't have shoes I'm afraid to wear. So help me God, if the next pair has these problems, I'm going to throw a fit worthy of the Hilton sisters.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

When my in-laws came down for Christian's birthday a couple of weeks ago, my MIL, Lynn, the Rock Star Goddess of All Things Knit®, brought me a 40" pair of steel circular needles and a little book on how to make them into the Magic Loop, the purpose of which is to eliminate the need for double points and the pesky task of changing needles in the middle of a project when your circulars get too long. Ha, I scoffed, this cannot be. Only double points work for teeny tiny little projects, and, even though they are a hassle and I'm constantly dropping stitches when changing from one needle to another, I thought, if women for thousands of years could knit with them, so can I!! There's even a medieval painting of the BVM knitting a shirt on DPs for the baby Jesus, and man, I thought, even MARY used DPs, so what kind of knitter am I if I don't?? I'd be a FAUX knitter, I thought, a POSER knitter. HOWEVER, Lynn had knit me a teeny little hat as a test for a pattern I wanted to make, and she said that she did it using the long needles, so hmmmmm....

On Monday I called in sick and I wanted to knit something new as I've had to frog my current project TWICE due to my inability to count, and I remembered a stuffed bear pattern I had seen on Knitty that reminded me of the bears my Grandma Teen made for us when we were little, which, of course, made me all misty and sentimental. I had a ton of remnant yarn from other projects and had recently purchased teeny tiny DPs for socks, so I thought I'd give Bubby a go. When I was looking for my DPs, da da da daaaaah, I found Lynn's needles and booklet and thought, eh, why not. They were the right size and I was too muzzy-headed from being sick to deal with DPs anyway. I read the instructions and they just seemed so simple. I cast on the 24 little stitches for the bear's body and did what the book said, and OH MY GOD, it actually worked! I was knitting in the ROUND on #3 40 inch circulars! It was the coolest thing EVER! I knit the entire bear this way, even the arms and legs which only required 10 cast on stitches. Here is the almost complete project with evidence of using the Magic Loop.

And as a bonus picture, my indisputably brilliant nephew Jayden learning to knit:

Of course, he should have been sleeping at the time, as evidenced by the closed eyes, but he's just so cute I couldn't tell him to get back into bed when he came shuffling out of the bedroom and looked at me through those long lashes. I'm such a sucker.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

he fed Gwendolyn this morning and threw out the "pond" water as it had mosquito larvae in it (she never goes near this water-we give her fresh every day in another bowl) and he gave the bird her antibiotics, which is so freaking cute as she LOVES it and opens her mouth REALLY WIDE as soon as she sees the dropper. She has that tiny little round birdie tongue that laps, laps, laps at the medicine. Tee hee!

yes, my husband is the best one EVER. He just brought me my phone that I left at home as well as a yogurt, 'cause I do get hungry. It's always a little strange to see him walk through the door at work, like a physical non-sequitur.

As if feeding me and keeping me mobily connected weren't enough, he came home on his lunch hour yesterday to take the bird to the vet. I gave her my cold.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

I had a dream last night in which Christian and I lived in a large chain bookstore a la Borders and were hatching worm babies from eggs. The eggs were very thick and solid and we had to assist the worm babies out as they couldn't break through the shells on their own. We lost one due to shell smothering and were very sad. There was no mother worm, so obviously no worm milk, so we had to feed our two surviving baby worms with a tiny little dropper and mushy red food. The worms had little round mouths at one tip that opened very wide in the manner of a Muppet. I was SO EXCITED when the worms ate that I started to cry.

I'm disturbed by this dream on many levels.

#1 All of my pets either don't eat at all, will only eat the wrong things or eat too much of everything. This causes me to feel tremendous guilt and makes me wonder at my apparent lack of animal husbandry skills.#2 Do I really want a baby that much?

Monday, September 12, 2005

Christian and I (and Tina separately) drove to Spokane Friday night to be with my parents at their friend Shirlie's funeral. She was their neighbor and very close friend for ten years, and took many adventuresome back country road vacations with them and my parents' other very dear friend Genette, who is my unofficial aunt, one of the few true ass-kickers and my personal rock star. Shirlie and Genette were man-bashers of the highest order and could drive my father, not a faint-hearted man, from the room in five minutes. One time on Father's Day, which was pretty funny. Their blistering condemnations of the useless men in their young lives were worthy of my generation's drunken Bridget Jones' type tirades and in-your-face feminism. We'll miss Shirlie tremendously.

Saturday was a lovely day, sending Shirlie off with a beautiful funeral (though with horrifying-to-the-very-depths-of-my-snotty-overeducated-soul music, cantored by that most heinous breed of Broadway wannabes in the style of scoop, sing three notes, run out of breath, sing three notes, scoop, etc, repeat ad nauseum), visiting my fabulous Grandma and her equally fabulous daughter Kay, who is also my Godmother and is getting remarried this year. Lovely, lovely, lovely, everything was lovely.

So, Sunday, we woke up early and said a fond goodbye to my excellent parents and their artery-defying breakfasts to drive back Seattle in time for the Eye-to-Eye behind the scenes tour of the Day and Night Exhibit at Woodland Park Zoo at 1:30. I had been intolerably excited about this little excursion for months, MONTHS I tell you! We registered for the same class last spring, but it was cancelled due to low enrollment. Why??? Who wouldn't want to lovingly stroke the reticulated python??? The D&NE is my FAVORITE exhibit and I could sit there for hours watching the armadillo run crazy laps and the slow loris wave his furry little butt at me, as if to mock my inability to shove my hand through that glass, grab him and smuggle him home in my purse. Anyway, on this tour we were going to hold the snakes (woo hoo!), feed the frogs (WOO HOO!) and pet the loris and sloths and such (WOOOOOO HOOOOOOO!!!) and I was going to collapse from sheer overabundance of cutey-cute-cute-cuterness and have to be resuscitated and carried out on a gurney. Then, if that wasn't enough to render me insensible, we were going to go to the UW Bookstore for a reading and signing of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, as the novel was released in paperback last week. All the glorious, fabulous, heart-breakingly marvelous things I love in one day!!!! Ack!

Anyway, we left in PLENTY of time (8:30, way too early to be up on Sunday) and the day was nice and blah blah blah. I fell asleep while Christian was driving but he woke me up outside of Moses Lake.

Christian: Honey, do we take Snoqualmie?Me (cranky and disoriented): Uh, yeah. Hello, how many times have you done this drive?Christian (ignoring the snotty comment): Well, the electronic sign up ahead says Snoqualmie Pass is closed.Me (suddenly very, very awake): Nuh uh, no way. It can't be, there's no snow. Maybe we just missed part of the message and a lane is closed or something. Let me call Mom.

Ah, ever helpful Mom, whom I always call in a crisis. She was fortunately still home and concerned in the way that only moms can be concerned; the gasp of breath, the shout to the father to go to the computer and look up the Washington State DOT's website, all the right and reassuring things moms are supposed to do (a side note: my cousin Mike's wife Amy always says that news, good or bad, gets the most dramatic response from my mom and her two sisters, so if we're mad about something, their vicarious anger is the best sympathy EVER.). She read to me that the pass was closed due to a rock slide and it wouldn't be reopening until two that afternoon. No....nooooooooo!!!!! IT COULDN'T BE!!!!

My dad began shouting alternate directions (in that very dadly kind of way) we could take to get home without crossing the pass. We took his advice and the Hwy 97 exit after Ellensburg and, at first, what a grand suggestion that was. Look! No traffic! Look! Blewett Pass and Old Blewett Road! Old Blewett Road again! And again! Damn, that's one windy road! It was exciting as Blewett is my unmarried name. I stopped to use a portapotty (oh, the horror) and we thought we'd be home in time to change first and make it to the zoo. I passed a few slow moving cars and then started to see a few more. And a few more. Then a whole lot more who weren't moving at all. The last sign we had seen read fifteen miles to HWY 2, which would take us to Monroe and then the 522, leading us home. By the time we reached the jam, though, we had only gone a mile or two after the sign. Could this backup stretch all the way to the junction? Nah, I thought, there must be an accident up ahead. There were a lot more people than usual on this highway, so maybe one of them misjudged a turn or something. I hoped for carnage and a swift speed up once past the accident. However, we just slowly rolled along, stopping more than starting, and could begin to see around the bend and the long, long line of cars stretched out in front of us, barely moving, and all of the people who had gotten out of their cars to mixturate in the bushes and stretch their legs. No accident, it would prove, just so much traffic at the 97/2 junction that traffic cops had been deployed to direct all of us pissed off big city drivers. It took two hours and a lot of screaming to finally get onto the 2. We had to pee, we were hungry and we were beyond pissed. It was 1:30 and the next sign said 126 miles to Seattle. We had missed our tour. I was too furious to cry. No lorises! No 18 foot reticulated pythons! No smelly sloths! No creatures of any description for me to pocket subtly and add to my home zoo. I was crushed. CRUSHED.

We stopped in Leavenworth (does every store sell the same nutcracker and t-shirt with the realistically-sized lederhosen screened on the front??) for lunch as I just couldn't make it any further without driving off a cliff. So...hungry.... I bought Aplets and Cotlets to carry me through the rest of the journey and a blown glass frog Christmas ornament to add to my collection and we started back. It seemed as though stopping for a while helped to clear out a bit of the traffic. Then HA! Whatever laws of the universe govern cars and their drivers dropped every piece of crap Dodge and chaw chompin' driver in my lane at the same time.

At one memorable point in this drive of doom, the road split into a slow lane and a passing lane and EVERYONE stayed in the passing lane. Well, everyone but me. I'm sorry, but the stupid tax states that if, when faced with an 80 mile traffic jam, you don't take EVERY opportunity to pass all the assholes whose driving makes sure you never get out of the traffic jam, you have no one to blame but yourself for sitting for three hours more than you could have if you had taken the passing lane. So, I sped by about fifteen cars and a nice man let me in at the end of the lane. Well, obviously I'm the lead lemming and so everyone followed me. This reeeeeeally didn't sit well with the drivers of a HUGE truck (tiny penis, tiny penis) and the driver of a Scion (who wasn't 17 and disgruntled, but WT and mustachioed) and they decided that NO ONE should be able to pass EVER and they crossed the dotted line dividing the passing and slow lanes and STAYED THERE for 150 yards, thusly preventing anyone from making headway. Hate people. Hate them.

We reached Gold Bar and the 30 MPH speed trap at six, reached Monroe (15 miles later and too late even to visit the Serpentarium) at seven and were finally home at 7:30, eleven hours after leaving Spokane. I was so mad and shaky and exhausted I had to clean. I scrubbed the holy shit out of the kitchen. Poor Constanze had been shivering in the freezing house all day, I had left the beans I didn't use for the chili out all weekend and they got a slimy, smelly gunge on top, the garbage smelled of spoiled chicken and there was coconut all over the living room floor. We were one step away from being on Animal Cops. Finally, I sat and watched Coupling for while (love Tivo) and went to bed, dreaming of asthma attacks.

It turns out that three women died in the rock fall. Lucky bitches. I'll bet there are no traffic jams in heaven.

Friday, September 09, 2005

I long for fall. I yearn for the crisp, misty, sea-scented air. I ache for the days where I can dress in boots and sweaters and take aimless drives with my beloved through country we couldn't find if we were looking.

I love to knit in the fall. The rain striking the panes of the windows as I feel the rasp and clack of the needles and the soft luxury of the yarn as it slides through my fingers...it is bliss.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

All of the women on my mother's side of the family have some form of panic disorder, which explains why we all grew up twitching and speak in REALLY LOUD VOICES. This, along with the asthma, eczema, hiatal hernia and bad arches are the reasons why I choose not to procreate. I curse my genetic legacy. Why did I get the fat gene? WHY??? Oh wait, that was from my dad's side. God hates me.

I spent four years in cognitive-behavioral therapy and finally decided, after I got married and the panic began to negatively affect someone other than me, to go on medication. Now, the decision making process was far more tortuous than the actual medication taking itself. My main worry was that the pills would make me less ME, that I would somehow lose that one thing that separated me from all other singers, that thing that made my husband love me. I weighed the pros and cons and decided to give it a try, and found that I LOVE being medicated. Love it. Paxil is my rock star. Going on Paxil was the most blissful transition I've ever made. Except for the lessened sex drive and feeling as though I had spontaneously contracted narcolepsy, I had never felt so good in my life. I understand that the euphoria felt by panic sufferers when starting SSRI's explains why people take the naughty kind of drugs. It's sooooo good, it should be illegal.

Which makes me half happy and half cranky about apparently becoming resistant to my current very low dose of Paxil. I'm getting the nausea, the low level anxiety, the need to self-medicate with caffeine, the electric shooters (oh yeah, good times, baby)...all the things I got when going through unintentional withdrawals when my doc wrote too few refills and I ran out of my drug. Ugh. I'm getting reaaaaaaally whiny and unfunny. All humor, gone. I have no wit. I am witless. The witless wonder. Wit-free for two weeks running. I'm really wondering, though, if upping my dosage can lower my sex drive even further, but, nothing minus something is still nothing. One positive side effect of the resistance (sounds like the French Underground in WWII) is that I feel horny again. Of course, the fact that I found Harvey Keitel in The Piano stimulating could mean that I have discovered a whole new side effect of Paxil withdrawal....

Every morning as I lie in bed, waiting until THE LAST POSSIBLE MINUTE to get up and get ready for work, mentally eliminating all unnecessary steps from my morning routine to give me a few more horizontal minutes, I think up excuses that I could use if I called in sick. Today's was:

The dust mites in my mattress have been especially active since the warm weather returned and they've just made my allergies terrible. I feel too unwell to come in.

Of course, this excuse has a limited time window as I'm finally getting new pillows and an allergy-proof comforter and mattress cover. They don't need to know that, however.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

I hate spiders. Hate, hate HATE them. There is nothing I'm afraid of more than a hobo spider. So, it only makes sense that one of them was in bed with me tonight. Yes, I was in bed reading and saw something scurry across my comforter (not very comforting at the moment) about two inches in front of my nose. I screamed and jumped out of bed. Christian came running in and he found Gigantor on the side of the bed. It was huge - at least three inches long and two inches wide. We caught it in the juice pitcher and Christian took it out and killed it. It looked exactly like this. I'm going to hurl.

Also, one of my parents' very best friends and neighbors died of ovarian cancer last night. She lived across from my folks for ten years and went, in two months, from perfectly healthy to hospitalized. They are, of course, extremely sad. I'm hoping to be able to go to Spokane for the service.

It's assholes like the author of this article that encourage parents with allergic children to keep pets. I don't like this site.

I'm going to have a bit of a rant that many people will disagree with. I don't like PETA. As a matter of fact, I loathe PETA. The assumption of a holier-than-thou vegan lifestyle seems to give members a carte blanche to condemn those who don't eschew all animal products. What, because the cows would run free through the prairies if they weren't on a wicked, wicked farm? I want all animals to be treated humanely as I adore all creatures (even those I can't be within a mile of), and there is a special level of hell for all of those who mistreat animals, but the judgmental quality of these two organizations towards the keeping of anything other than dogs and cats pisses me off. Their narrow minded extremism is highly arrogant and is based on the presumption that, because I keep non-furry animals, I'm a oppressor and beast who must be a republican. Both organizations strongly discourage the ownership of exotics, and especially the purchase of exotics from breeders as such will, of course, only encourage the pet trade. I have made EVERY EFFORT to avoid imported animals and want to work very hard to help halt the dangerous and environmentally damaging import of exotics. So those of us who wish to responsibly own exotics are basically painted as evil, uncaring bastards who think only of our own desires and nothing of the well-being of these animals we're forcing into captivity for our own nefarious purposes (yeah, that's why I regularly get up at the asscrack of dawn to clean the stinky snake cage so they don't have to sit in their own pee). They especially discourage people from owning birds, and the reasons they give are many and disputable. Yes, birds are extremely intelligent and should be given as much freedom and the healthiest enviroment as possible, but this does not mean that keeping one makes the owner worthy of of the type of guilt the author is trying to whip us with. I have worked very hard to be a good pet owner, researching the needs of my animals BEFORE I acquire them, adopting when possible and giving them the best enviroment for their needs. I'M A GOOD PERSON, DAMMIT!!!

The dog/cat owner absolution also infuriates me. What, it's OK to subjugate and oppress some kinds of animals and not others? Yes, dogs and cats are domesticated, but that was human work. The snobbery and arrogance held by the individuals writing on behalf of these two organizations towards anyone who either chooses another species as a pet or decides to preserve their own health or the health of their family is pretty evocative of the black and white views of their type. I have no use for these people.

Monday, September 05, 2005

In my own personal hell, I'll spend eternity working in Lucifer's retail store chain. All stores will pipe in only rap and country music and I'll serve Bellevue trophy wives decaf nonfat sugar free lattes all day.

I have nothing but pity and sympathy for the manager and baristas at our neighborhood Starbucks (our neighborhood being Aurora, Hooker and Pimp Capital of the Northwest). We went in on Sunday to buy Bumbershoot tickets and caught the tail end of a truly stupendous tirade by a very butch, you-only-find-them-in-the-Northwest female plaid-wearer. It seems that, according to what I could understand through the screaming, she was infuriated by the men's bathroom being unlocked but having to use the key from behind the counter to use the women's bathroom.

I quote, "That is sexist and unacceptable! I didn't serve my country to come back and have to use a key to get into the women's bathroom while the men's bathroom is unlocked!! I'm going to tell all my friends not to come here and they'll listen! It's SEXIST!!"

The poor manager tried to tell the ex-military post-modern feminist that the lock on the men's bathroom door had broken three times, but she didn't want to listen. She was a yeller. Yelling seemed to make her very happy. A number of issues had that one.

Now, of course, as soon as she was blown out, she went back to her seat to finish what I presume was her soy chai latte and maple nut scone (as I imagine that's what all military lesbians drink and eat) at the table around which a very large number of what I assume where her friends were sitting. She sat and ate her pastry and drank her beverage for a good ten minutes and left with her pack at the same time we did. Now, if she was going to tell her friends not to come to that location, she didn't have far to go to do it. They all seemed pretty content to stay and suffer from the sexism of a locked women's restroom. Boy, she must have been REALLY PISSED to only stay ten minutes.

Now, I'm personally very happy that the women's bathroom is locked, even if the men's bathroom is open, as the available bathrooms in our neighborhood are primarily used for shooting up and turning tricks. Men only have to actually sit on the bathroom fixtures 50% of the time, so they stand a better chance of missing stray fluids. Women don't stand a chance.

Now that I've written it, I'm certain this post is going to send me TO that tiny little retail location in the inferno. I really hope it has air-conditioning.

About Me

I'm an opera singer and SAHM. I live in Seattle with my husband Christian and daughter Viv, where we have a little red house which we share with two snakes, two box turtles, three parrots and all of my neuroses and allergies. God, we're going to be devoured by our pets.